436 Friend Requests On FourSquare: Accepted

Image via WikipediaI just went ahead and accepted 436 pending friend requests on FourSquare. For the longest time I was like, do I really want you to know where I am? And now I feel like for me social media is primarily about getting to know people I don't already know. And FourSquare is as good as any. There are people in the far corners of the planet who would like to live my New York City life vicariously, and I am cool with that, I think.

These are people from all over the country and all over the world saying hello to me. And many of them have links to their Twitter and Facebook pages from their FourSquare page. So when I do want to get to know them a little bit better, that is an option.

They reached out to me. They did that months ago, more than a year ago. But so far I was like, do I really want you to know where I am? Now I am not feeling so edgy at all. If a location check in can start a conversation, I am all for it.

This move might also mean I might start checking in on FourSquare a little more regularly than I have.

Facebook Messaging Event: My Favorite Question

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So I am watching this event - the event of the day, the event of the week - and the talk this past week has been that Facebook is about to release a Gmail killer, and the talk this past month, maybe this past year has been that Facebook is eclipsing Google, and there is some talk Facebook might make it hard for FourSquare - FourSquare stole an engineer from Yahoo months back, Facebook stole an engineer from FourSquare recently - and Mike Arrington never stopped harassing Carol Bartz, TechCrunch recently put out an "infographic" laying out how Yahoo is hemorrhaging, and Time Armstrong made news when his company is not even 1/10th the size of Yahoo but he wanted to buy out Yahoo, and people have been on a lookout for Jerry Yang - where is David? - and one person at the event asks Mark Zuckerberg this question, so, my Facebook friends are not my real friends, they are just casual friends, and all my closest friends are on my Yahoo Mail account, and how is this new Facebook Messaging going to alter my life, are you telling me all these not so real friends I have on Facebook are going to be able to message me now?

What Gmail Can Learn From Yahoo Mail

Image via CrunchBaseThere is this feature in Yahoo Mail, you click on the Sender column title at the top, and all your emails get organized by who sent you the email. You click on Date and all your emails in the inbox get similarly organized.

This feature comes in very handy when you are out to massacre emails. You want to save that rare email. On the other hand you don't want to have to delete emails one at a time.

Google Needs To Reinvent Gmail

Image via CrunchBaseI have heard this over and over again over months from many, many people. Gmail has slowed down to a trickle. Email continues to be a massively popular program. Google might have tackled the web over a decade ago, but no one has been able to tackle the inbox. The inbox is ripe territory.

TechCrunch: Hey Gmail, 1994 Called, It Wants Its Dial-Up Level Performance Back

TechCrunch is a blog that mostly talks about which startup got funded. But today it has been talking about the slowness of Gmail. Fast is a good reason to be in news, not slow. Slow is no good.

Microsoft: Smartphone, Tablet, Bar Code

Image via CrunchBase

TechFlash: Microsoft Tag claims front-runner status among next-gen barcodes: Microsoft this morning claimed new momentum for its Microsoft Tag technology, which lets people scan color barcodes with their phones to automatically connect to online sites, phone numbers and other corners of the digital world. According to Microsoft, more than 1 billion Tags have been printed in the past four months, fueled by heavy usage in magazines and other print campaigns.